Dispatching services to the intended recipient whether it be for emergency needs or commercial type services has a general need to decrease response time. There are several factors effecting the response time in location based services. First there is the relative location of the service provider and the recipient. A second factor is that highway congestion is variable and unpredictable. Third, is the number of delivering units available from the service provider. Each of these elements adds significant variability to the response time by the service provider. Response time is obviously more critical in emergency situations but it also has a significant impact on commercial services as well.
In general, a typical dispatch system is comprised of a dispatch control, a dispatch assignment, a dispatch destination and a means for communicating therewith. The dispatch assignment delivers the service of interest, such as providing care to the customer or delivering products to the end destination. The dispatch assignment may be an ambulance or a delivery vehicle which needs to reach the dispatch destination to complete the transaction. A request for service is made by the customer and this request is relayed to the appropriate dispatch assignment. The dispatch assignment the moves to the dispatch destination to deliver the product or service.
The time it takes from a customer""s request until the dispatch assignment arrives at the dispatch destination is critical in both emergency and product or service delivery. In an emergency context, the customer may have a life-threatening situation and time for the dispatch assignment to reach the dispatch destination is obviously critical. Time is also critical in a commercial circumstance for numerous reasons. The product itself may introduce time constraints and require a minimal transport time, resource optimization is of interest to the service provider in order to improve capitalization from a business standpoint and customer satisfaction in terms of wait time is another business consideration.
One method for improving dispatch time is to choose the closest dispatch assignment from a plurality of dispatch resources, to the service destination. This may be the simplest approach however this does not take into account several factors. Highway congestion and the location of the dispatch resources can have a significant effect on the travel time of the dispatch resources. For example a dispatch resource may be located on slow moving back roads which will hinder response time as well as introduce greater variability, as opposed to a dispatch resource which may be further away but nonetheless, located on a fast moving highway and have a much quicker response time. Therefore an improved method for dispatching is required.